Wed, 07 Mar 2007

Sometime last year when updating the Innocent
in London
page I realised the link to the registration entry of the Metropolitan
Police Service (MPS) in the register of data controllers maintained by
the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) was not working anymore. I
looked for an updated entry and none were to be found. I simply updated
the page with the annotation: ‘[update: the link to the
entry –
www.esd.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/esd/DoSearch.asp?reg=2789622 –
is now dead and I cannot find the new DPR entry for the Met]’.

Early February,
as I had to contact the Public Access Office of the MPS, I took this
opportunity to ask ‘for the registration
number(s) or name(s) under which the MPS data controller(s) is
registered under the Data Protection Act as I can't find any entry for
it any more in the ICO's register of data controllers’.
First time I asked, this query was ignored. Second time I asked, it was
ignored again.

The MPS is registered under the Data Protection Act
with the
Information Commissioner. The Data Protection Registration No. is
Z4888193, the entry expires on 8/9/07.

You can verify this for yourself by searching for the registration
number at the ICO's register
of data controllers search page. (Permalinks to the register
don't tend to be permanent, but here's one to the entry
itself). I can't reproduce the full entry here for copyright
reasons (the copyright is listed at the bottom of the entry).

This is a positive development as if the MPS had not been registered it
would have meant that all the police databases such as the
Police National Computer, the National DNA Database, IDENT1, the
National Automatic Number Plate Recognition Database, etc. would have
been unlawful. That being the case, it would have been likely for some
trials to be dismissed on pure technicality. We are all safer with
police databases being operated lawfully.

What is curious is that this entry, originally registered on 09
September 2000, suddenly reappears today after multiple
enquiries by SpyBlog and myself to the ICO, the Public Access Office of
the MPS and to the Metropolitan Police Authority. The data controller
is listed as COMMISSIONER FOR THE METROPOLIS.
The searches done by SpyBlog, MOL and myself would have found this
entry if it had been present.

Through the independent efforts of SpyBlog and myself, both the MPS and
the ICO have been aware that the MPS entry in the data controler
register could not be found. (Visitors from the MPS are regulars
to the Innocent in London page and they are also likely to have noticed the update note there.) Only a nudge from the MPA, it seems, made
it reappear as if by magic. Why it disappeared from the public register
for several months, in the first place, remains a mystery.

2007-03-07 EDITED TO ADD: SpyBlog posted this news on its sister FOIA blog. An earlier post is about SpyBlog's FOIA request to the ICO.